Angel Olsen Is Nobody's Woman

"Let's explain first the tinsel wig," Angel Olsen says. It's not that the singer-songwriter is obsessed with shiny accessories—but after she donned the silver headpiece in recent music videos, people seemed to think she was trying to emulate fellow wig-wearing crooner Sia. "It wasn't a statement in becoming someone else, necessarily," the 29-year-old singer explains. "What's so interesting about wearing a wig is that it created a character."

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In the lead-up to her fourth album, My Woman(out September 2), Olsen is preoccupied with the consequences of presentation and persona. The wig was just one way to play with all that. Releasing a chilly, synth-laden song like "Intern," eerily reminiscent of '80s Julee Cruise, when you're an artist lionized for her lo-fi folk-rock guitar compositions is another. "People always think you are trying to be something, especially if you have a new aesthetic or a new song, and I was totally trying to mess with them," she says.

"People always think you are trying to be something...and I was totally trying to mess with them."

Preconceived notions about Olsen abound, in part because the world is well acquainted with—and plain obsessed with—her arresting music. Her last record, 2014's Burn Your Fire for No Witness, in fact scorched plenty who were drawn in by its flame. On it, fuzzy guitars languidly framed Olsen's elemental voice, and the result channels both '60s folk and the wildest winds you've ever had the misfortune to encounter. Burn Your Fire earned her countless devotees and a reputation as a musician whose work was capable of embodying any and every emotion you've ever had, or even conceived of.

My Woman is only going to cement that part of her image. Olsen's newest songs are similarly buffeted by passionate winds, from the romantic belligerence in "Shut Up Kiss Me" to the howling "Not Gonna Kill You" and the gentle hope of "Sister." This uncanny purity of feeling, which fans adore, reflects Olsen's primal writing process. "It is like this surge of energy," she explains. "I am not hungry, chords are everywhere, my hair is frizzy…people are texting me like, 'Where are you? Why aren't you responding to me?' But I am just in it."

Yet just because Olsen shirks easy labels, that doesn't mean she thinks she knows exactly who she is. With Groundhog Day weariness, she acknowledges the constant work of simply being in "Intern," where she sings, "Doesn't matter who you are or what you've done / Still gotta wake up and be someone." Exploring that mutable human core is the raison d'etre of her music. "This is why I write! I am processing it for you right now," she says. On the other hand, as we know, that doesn't mean she wants to be someone else. More importantly, the project is to understand herself better—which might mean accepting that there's nothing simple about that at all: "I am going through my late twenties, so it's my return of Saturn or whatever, but I think the whole thing is just getting used to not knowing the answer."

I feel like with this record, I am just ready to be in charge of my own image

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Knowing yourself: pretty straightforward, right? Not on your life. But if there's something Olsen does know about herself right now, it's that she craves challenges and a greater degree of control over her output. "I feel like with this record, I am just ready to be in charge of my own image," she says. Hence her heavy involvement in the music videos attached to My Woman, from directing to editing and deciding to don that pretty silver wig. "I'm not a professional director," Olsen demurs. "But I do like learning about how it works so I can see from a different perspective how hard it is."

The result is a suite of videos that span from the California dreaming of "Sister"—all intimate shots of quotidian scenes and heartbreaking desert city views—to the hilariously campy '50s pastiche of "Shut Up Kiss Me," which sees Olsen dragged to the floor by errant rollerskaters and singing like an unhinged ex-girlfriend into an unplugged rotary phone.

Another thing that's been hard—or, at least, puzzling—is the literalism and unexpected gender myopia that My Woman's title has elicited. One journalist recently asked Olsen when she was going to have a baby, while others have asked whether she was afraid of losing her male fans or whether she was making a feminist statement with the phrase. Despite the blatant bad manners, Olsen has a kind of winking sympathy about the title's ambiguity. "Of course people are like: Who is the woman? Are you the woman?" she says. "And I was like, 'I don't know! I am still finding that out!'"

One journalist recently asked Olsen when she was going to have a baby, while others have asked whether she was afraid of losing her male fans

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"When I think of 'My Woman,' I think of all these connotations," Olsen continues. "It's old-fashioned in that when I hear it, I feel kind of complimented. But then I am like, Wait, why am I complimented by this? That is so degrading!" Her own revealing, polarized response to that possessiveness helped her take a broader view of relationships: "That is kind of what the struggle is—it makes us blind from just seeing each other as humans, and respecting one another as humans."

Seeing people for who they are is the challenge Olsen lays down for us on the song "Woman," where she sings, "I dare you to understand what makes me a woman." In fact, that's a dare that permeates the whole album. Peel back the layers, and cast aside your preconceptions: With this provocative new album, Olsen shows that she's no one's woman as much as she is her own.

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